Small Empire Strategies

[dot80]

What are some good strategies for a small empire (2-4 cities)? This of course would be going for the more peaceful victories (culture/time). No space race though, I always disable that victory.

 

[ahcos]

Even culture attempts are pretty hard with so little cities, unless you build tons of wonders in all of them ofc. 6 cities are the minimum to win on pretty much every difficulty.... or less cities in the beginning, and you rush out to get some more, e.g. catapult rushes or horse archer rushes.

Don't think it's possible to win with 4 cities on Immortal/Deity alone.

 

[MyOtherName]

A long time ago, one of the main culture strategies was one that could work with three cities -- two good cottage cities, one good GP farm. Build culture multipliers, run artists in the GP farm, go 100% culture slider once you have liberalism (or maybe printing press, or maybe rifling). Settle great artists if it's worth it, otherwise use great works to get up to legendary.

I'm pretty sure that, around the time this was first really advertised, this set a Deity record for early culture victory. (although I think the specific game that managed it wound up settling a tiny fourth city that never really went beyond size 2 for most or all of the game)

 

[Ghpstage]

2-4 cities isn't a small empire, its little more than non-existant empire!

Culture wins on standard sized maps require a minimum of 3 cities, any less renders it completely impossible and just 3 will make it very difficult due to not having more than one cathedral. Time victories are going to prove effectively impossible at even medium levels as a large proportion of you score is made up of land area and population, and your going to have to actively block AI victory atttempts.

Anything else is going to be extremely difficult as you won't have the pop to do much with and can't build many national wonders, however you should still be able to win using the Apostolic Palace (AP) if your playing the Beyond the sword expansion.

Your probably better off going for a military break out than attempting non-AP victories with so few cities as it involves solving the small empire problem!

The most effective small empire strategy I know of is making use of the faact your not spending hammers on settlers and workers in order to build wonders.

 

[dot80]

Just wondering, thought there might be some interesting strategy I had never heard about.

 

[Um the Muse]

There's always the One City Challenge option

 

[yatta77]

What are some good strategies for a small empire (2-4 cities)? This of course would be going for the more peaceful victories (culture/time). No space race though, I always disable that victory.

Time I don't know, since with only 2-4 cities being first in score seems unlikely to me.

Culture with 3-4 cities I've done it over 50% of attempts on Emperor, either with SE (running artists instead of scientists) or CE, or any mix of those. Sistine Chapel and Cathedrals + Hermitage play a very important role. Free Speech is the key Civic. After Liberalism (usually used for Nationalism) you switch research off and run 100% culture. Diplomacy is important, if you lack good diplomatic relations you need to pray, and maybe research at least up to Rifling.

If you post a game (level Emperor or below), I'll try.

Cheers

- yatta

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Best option: Conquer more cities.

But for a variant where you limit yourself to 4 cities, I'd say:

-Small map, so you get a cathedral with every 2 cities.

-Make 2 cities your culture hubs, like a normal culture victory.

-The other 2 run spies. Use the Spread Culture mission on an AI city until it's at culture-victory-level.

-Conquer that city. When it comes out of resistance, you'll win a culture victory.

 

[mtr12]

You can't win without 6 cities unless you use AP. Even a Culture player should have a minimum of 6 cities, and preferably 9.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've done immortal culture on 3 cities a few times. It's actually not too hard if you don't get declared on/killed, but if you have a nice neighbor it's often possible to just hide behind him with a DP .

More religions helps in this case, because you only get 1 cathedral/religion but that's not too bad when you have 3-4 religions, hermitage, and 2 strong cottage cities + a city to bomb.

Generally, however, this is not good play nor is it necessary. It's rare below deity that you truly struggle to make 6 cities, and even there it is often possible in BTS.

 

[coanda]

If you have a small empire, diplomacy is critical. If a leading AI is allowed to peacefully tech and develop while you sit there with 4 cities, you'll lose. If an AI is allowed to overrun his neighbors one-by-one, you'll lose. And if you get seriously attacked any time after the Medieval period, you'll lose. So you need to be bribing to start wars, sharing religions and civics, giving in to demands, accurately judging which AIs are the threats...

This can buy you a fair amount of time, but even best-case AIs are going to start out-teching you around the end of the Medieval. Eventually you may have very few options for bribing AIs to start wars, so it's important that you get all the diplomatic blocs balanced nicely and thoroughly hating each other as quickly as possible.

Even if everything breaks your way, odds are you won't be able to get a spaceship victory without going down a level or two from where you normally play. UN victory will be unusually tough. But cultural and AP will be quite possible, if you plan for them from the start. Because the other feature of this sort of small empire is that you have no wiggle room to adjust plans when things go wrong.

yatta (he posted above) played some Immortal Minimalism games recently that were a great demonstration of how much can be achieved by simply setting an early plan and sticking to it.